Forget What We're Told
by I Murder Carrots 4 Fun
Summary: There's a dead man in Quantico Guest Quarters. And his fifteen year old daughter is the main suspect. But can the team bring themselves to take her down for murder, when she stirs up old memories in them all?
1. Not Knowing

"Tony. The body's on the floor, not on my ass."

Tony grinned, showing two rows of pointy teeth. "Not from where I'm standing." Tony's scene-of-crime camera flashed. Kate swatted at him halfheartedly with an evidence bag, feeling secretly pleased.

The dead man was Caucasian, but tanned. He looked like the sort who could walk through a patch of sunlight and wind up brown as a nut, Kate mused. Those people really got to her. They were like the ones who could eat and eat and eat and never gain an ounce. The man propped up against the wall looked like one of those as well. Considering his age –sixty or so- he was remarkably trim. Possibly excepting the fact that he had a hole in the side of his forehead so big his brains just wanted to come oozing out.

They were in the guest quarters of Quantico Naval Base, in a corridor just near the bar.

Tony had crouched down beside the man and was flashing pictures of the glorious head wound poking out from under his receding grey-black hairline.

"Have you got me a name?" Gibbs swept up behind them.

Tony stood up.

"Rear-Admiral Dr Fryderik Chelmonski. Royal Navy. And a good morning, Boss."

"Royal _British_ Navy?"

"That's right, Boss."

"He developed an electrode which could alleviate pain, bypassing the nerves," said Kate, slipping a cheap mobile phone she had found beside the body into an evidence bag.

"What was he doing here?" Gibbs squatted down on the chevron patterned maroon carpet and stared into one half-closed, glassy, bright blue eye.

"Having talks, apparently. With his US counterparts."

"About?"

"Electrodes? I dunno," said Tony, and earned himself a Gibbs Stare. "But I Shall Find Out."

"Was he here alone?"

Kate shook her head. "His wife and younger daughter are here with him. Tony sent McGee up to question them."

Gibbs fuelled himself up with a deep gulp of coffee. "With me," he said, already starting to walk down the corridor. Tony and Kate frowned. It was unlike Gibbs to leave the scene of crime unsupervised by an NCIS agent. He turned a corner, disappearing from view.

"You stay."

"I'm the senior field agent."

"And therefore responsible for keeping the crime scene secure."

"The Probies can keep it secure."

"I'd love to see you explaining that theory to Gibbs."

The situation having reached a stalemate, Tony and Kate both went for the Stare 'Em Down Tactic.

A voice drifted down the corridor.

"I'm most dreadfully sorry, Jethro!" came the inimitable Ducky. "Only a certain assistant of mine forgot the gurney and we had to drive all the way back to get it."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I swear I put it in there last night," said a haggard looking Jimmy Palmer as the ME and Assistant emerged into the corridor.

"Yes, well, clearly one of your many delusions." Short answers weren't typical of Ducky, but everyone was vaguely touchy after being called in at three AM. "Ah. What have we here… Observe, Mr Palmer, the bloody mark on the wall matches the blood pattern on our victim's forearms…"

Gibbs' head appeared round the corner again. "Which part of 'with me' did you two not understand?"

Tony and Kate stared. "How the hell did he _know_?"

"It's Gibbs," said Tony resignedly. "He just knows."

McGee opened the door to room 203 one or two seconds after Tony knocked, and stared at the rest of his team through slightly unfocused eyes.

"Boss," he said. "They didn't _know_."


	2. A Confession

"That girl's father was lying downstairs with his brains falling out for five hours and no one even bothered to tell her." McGee's face was red with indignation.

"McGee."

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's just so…"

Tony stepped into the room. He put a hand on McGee's shoulder and looked at him sternly. "Now, McGee. You know how we feel about that word, don't you?"

"Sign of weakness. Right."

"When you're done with your romantic moment, McGee, would you be so good as to let us in?" Gibbs eyed McGee unsympathetically.

"Er, right."

"Nice place," said Tony.

"You think, DiNozzo? For a Rear-Admiral?"

Tony raised his hands in an exaggerated 'give up' gesture.

"McGee."

"Yes, Tony?"

"Why has a Royal Navy medico man got three pairs of ski boots in his corridor?"

"The family was skiing in France but were called over here urgently. They just got on the first flight from Courchevel."

"Courchevel? Where the hell's that?"

"It's a ski resort, Tony," said Kate. "For rich people. You probably went there as a child while my dad worked extra for a month just to drive us down to Boston."

Courchevel, right. He probably _had_ been there. He vaguely remembered being dragged out of bed at six thirty to make it to his private ski lesson. He'd been pretty good. Hadn't liked it much. How much can you like something when every time you forget to 'bend ze knees' or 'keep ze skiis parallel', the instructor hits you with a ski pole? Of course, that'd all been before he was old enough to leave at home on holidays. Not that he minded. It was nice to have the house to himself.

The room was dark but for a warm bedside lamp. The curtains were still drawn. There was a double bed with the covers all rolled about. A plump woman had sunk into the end. She was in a flimsy silk nightie, which Tony found slightly horrifying in someone of her age and figure. Every few seconds she gave a small sob. McGee shuffled his feet and clucked ineffectually at her.

"Mrs Chelmoska. Mrs Chelmonska, this is my boss, Special Agent Gibbs, and these are Special Agents Todd and DiNozzo. Um. Er. We'd appreciate it if you could just answer some questions." He was giving her a disgustingly pleading look.

"Doctor," said the woman, breaking off from her sobs and staring up at McGee, eyes red and streaming. She sounded slightly surprised.

McGee gave Gibbs, Kate and Tony a puzzled glance. Tony shrugged.

"Er, Sorry?" ventured McGee.

"_Dr_ Chelmonska. I'm a doctor."

She had an English accent, with a heavy Slavic overlay. McGee stared at her as if she had just asked him if he had ever shoved a sherbet lemon up his ass. Gibbs glanced at Kate, who nodded.

She sat down on the bed beside the widow doctor. "Could you just run through your evening for me?"

Dr Chelmonska stared at Kate venomously. "Are you trying to tell me that I killed my own husband."

Tony and McGee pulled a face at one another. Gibbs gestured them over to the side.

"Where's the girl?" he said.

"Through there." Gibbs nodded. He opened the connecting door to go through to the next room. Tony followed him.

A girl leapt to her feet from where she had been perched on a roughly made-up bed. She was in red creased and baggy tartan pyjamas. She looked about sixteen or seventeen, too chubby to be attractive. Her darkening blonde bed-hair stuck out at odd angles.

She peered up at them curiously from under designer glasses.

"Hullo," she said politely. There was none of her mother's Polish accent. This was a thousand pounds a term of British private school talking.

"I'm Agent Gibbs. This is Agent Dinozzo."

She nodded. "I suppose you've come to ask me 'some questions'." She gave a weak smile, and then glued her eyes to stain on the carpet.

"Yes."

"Timmy said you would. I suppose it's a bit much to ask, but… um… First, would you let me see him?" She was wriggling her toes desperately. 'Timmy'? How cosy.

"Well, we still, er, need to clean him up and, er…" stammered McGee.

"No, I need to seem him now. Before you move him. Please."

"I don't think it's-"

"She can see him, McGee," said Gibbs.

"Thank you," she said, gazing up at Gibbs.

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"Boss. Are you sure this is a good idea? I mean, apart from anything, if you just consider the psychological effect seeing her father dead like that could have…" Babbled McGee in Gibbs' ear.

Tony frowned. Memory sparked. A bad day at school. He was flunking Maths again. The dad was away on business. He'd walked home. His parents hated it, but he did it anyway. It was a dry day. Grey and dry. He'd opened up the front door. It was quiet. Too quiet. The clocks ticked. So loud, it was like they were shaking the house. And then he'd heard the banister creak and walked down the corridor to see his mother swinging from the stairs, rope around her neck, her eyes purple and bulging down at him…

"Tony? You okay?"

Tony looked up at McGee honest, concerned face. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I'm fine."

The dead man's daughter hadn't bothered with shoes. She just followed Tony down the stairs in her navy blue socks.

There weren't many people up yet; even on a naval base the guest quarters aren't generally yet awake at five.

The Marines who had secured the scene glared at them with dull resentment, which gave way to surprise as they saw that Tony was being tailed by a sleepy sixteen year-old in tartan pyjamas.

"I'd estimate time of death at around eleven thirty last night," said Ducky, without turning around.

And then he did; saw the girl's wide-eyed, horrified face.

"It was my fault," she said. It sounded a great deal more certain than anything she had said up in the room.

"My dear," said Ducky, who looked delighted at hearing the British accent. "I understand you're traumatised, but you can hardly blame yourself for…"

"No, you don't understand." She was as tall as Ducky, and stared the man down furiously. "It was me. I killed my dad."


	3. Very Much Hinky

"She's lying."

"I know."

"Then why is she sitting in your interview room, Jethro?"

"I want to know _why _she's lying."

Ducky jabbed a finger at the X-rays of the dead man. "Look at the damage to the ribs and the back of the head. A fifteen year old girl could simply not have done this."

"She didn't, Ducky. I checked with the mother, who swears that at eleven thirty, her daughter was 'blowing up aliens' on her computer. I just want to know why she tried to tell us it was her."

Ducky sighed. "Just don't grill her, Jethro."

"I know. She's not a steak." Gibbs was already backing towards the lift.

"She's just a _child_!"

Gibbs nodded.

His wife had said that to him once. Only her voice had been so different from Ducky's reproachful intonation, her face so far from his disapproving frown.

He'd been deployed when she was pregnant: a parachute training exercise with the Royal Marines in Scotland. He'd buggered up his knee for the first time, and hobbled into the house early. He'd seen the three month old Kelly crawling across the patio. And then he'd said; "She can't walk."

Shannon had put her arms round his neck, and giggled. "She's just a child, Jethro. Not a superhuman."

And then he'd laughed too.

But Kelly _was_ a superhuman. He knew it now more than ever.

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"What've you got?"

Tony flicked the remote. A picture of the girl downstairs appeared on the screen. She looked different. Happy. Grinning. Less pale. He hair was blonder and straighter, falling almost to her elbows. She had her arm around someone else, but they'd been cut from the picture.

"Alex Chelmonska. Boarding school in Northern England. I spoke to some of her teachers just now…"

Kate read from her notes. "Said she is initially painfully shy, but having known someone for a while she has a tendency to become outgoing. She's exceptionally talented in English and History, and has so far scored full marks on every piece of GCSE coursework for those subjects. However, they said she 'struggles' with Maths and all three Sciences, although Physics isn't as bad. She has a reputation as a prankster, and was recently put on report for filling the school's newly installed air ventilation system with sulphur…"

"Damn, that's a good idea," said Tony. "Now why didn't I think of that?"

The slap was not unexpected.

"If there are any unexplained eggy smells, Tony, I'll know who to blame." Abby had come up to the bull pen.

"Don't you normally wait for me to come down, Abs?" said Gibbs. He seemed to have produced a coffee from nowhere, as he sure as hell hadn't been out, and he hadn't sent McGee. Tony finally settled on the conclusion that Gibbs had hauled out some unsuspecting Probie from somewhere for his caffeine fix.

"Yeah, Gibbs. But you didn't get my brain signals."

"I was just about to come down. So have you found something?"

"That's just it, Gibbs. Absolutely nothing's hinky, which I suppose must be hinky in itself, because what are the chances of there being nothing hinky at all?"

The team needed a few seconds to digest an Abby Speech. She took it as an indication to carry on.

"But I _did_ find a blob of spilt Portsmouth Dry. But it's not like it's that unusual so near the bar. I'm running it for DNA, but unless someone, like, spat in their glass or something…"

"My mum always drank Portsmouth Dry."

"From what I've heard, DiNozzo, I really ought to ask if she drank Portsmouth Dry or Portsmouth dry?"

"I'd have to say probably both, Boss. She had a three month fling with our pool man in Portsmouth."

"Maybe she drank Portsmouth dry of Portsmouth Dry?" suggested Abby.

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"What is she doing?"

Alex Chelmonska was drumming the interview table with her fingers. She wasn't nervous. She gave a final closure to her tune, yawned, stretched out her arms ahead of her, a reflex action to interlock her palms and flip them over the wrong way. Then she began to drum the table again, her fingertips flowing into one another. She had a look of intense concentration on her face.

Then Kate realised. She was watching the suspect through the observation room window. The girl was still in her tartan pyjamas and socks.

"She's playing the piano."

McGee squinted through the glass. "Does she know we can see her?"

"Her housemistress told me she was a crime novel and film buff. She'd know about the two-way mirrors from there, I expect."

"I don't think she cares much."

And frankly, Kate agreed. The girl propped her head in her hand and her elbow on the table, and scratched the back of her head with her other hand.

The door closed behind them. "Man, she looks like shit," said Tony.

"So do you," said Kate.

"Been up since three, didn't get to bed till two."

"And what were you doing up till two, Tony?" said McGee.

"Having a life, Probalicious. I don't think I'm the only one who isn't in bed by seven thirty."

"Okay, Tony, that was just once. And I had a headache."

Tony laughed, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed through the screen.

Kate said nothing. She had a suspicion she knew where Tony had been up till two. She'd come into the office at twelve a few weeks ago, looking for her phone, which she'd stupidly dumped in her drawer with her badge and gun. Tony had been at his desk, rattling away at his keyboard. He stared up at her as if she'd caught him putting a whoopee cushion on the president's chair. He mumbled something about Gibbs chewing him up if he didn't get a report finished. But they were right in the middle of a case, and the last one had been months ago.

She smiled fondly. It was always Tony that had fresh results in the morning.

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The interrogation room door opened and Gibbs stepped in with a coffee.

Alex leapt to her feet and stood at what, if she hadn't been wearing tartan pyjamas and bed hair, might have been called attention.

"Do they really teach you to do that in English boarding schools?" said McGee.

"She was… _is_ in her school CCF."

Tony looked blank. "Combined Cadet Force, Tony. Like in the military, but still at school. Like you when you were at Military School."

Tony gave McGee a dark, sidelong look. "You wouldn't have survived three minutes in military school, Probette."

"Sit down," said Gibbs.

Alex sat as if the seat and her ass were polar ends of a magnet.

Gibbs scraped back a chair, and sat down himself.

She studied him in silence, squinting and leaning slightly over the table.

"Special Agent …Gibbs," she said at last.

Gibbs nodded. "Where are your glasses?"

She squinted at him again. "I think I… I think one of the agents that arrested me might've accidentally trodden on them."

"I'll speak to them about it."

Alex was clearly perceptive enough to understand what 'speak to them' entailed. "No, please, Mr Gibbs. I'm sure I probably just dropped them."

Tony nearly choked. "_Mr_ Gibbs!"

McGee frowned. "Who arrested her?"

"Some Probies." Tony laughed. "Gibbs is gonna kick their butts. I'm just glad its not me."

"Oh believe me, Tony. So am I."

And he really was. It even happened to computer specialists. He vividly remembered his early days, when he'd been called upon to arrest a Navy funds embezzler. He'd kicked the guy so hard and left a bruise so purple, the lawyers got the guy off. _Nearly_ got the guy off.

Tony and McGee laughed. They looked at Kate.

But Kate had gone pale, even in the dark blue lighting of the observation room. She was staring through the window.

Gibbs had stood up, and was bending over Alex, who was slumped over the table.

"Shit," said Tony. "Call Ducky."


	4. What Are You Doing?

"Do you think there'll be an inquiry?" said McGee's hushed, anxious voice.

"Nah," said Tony. "We're all witnesses, right? We saw that Gibbs didn't do anything."

"Well, Tony, you and I weren't actually looking…"

Tony gave McGee a look under which the Junior Agent withered. Gibbs' loyal St Bernard indeed.

"I was," said Kate. "He did nothing. He was just about to speak when the girl just fell forward like that. She didn't even say anything. Besides, It'll be on the tape."

"Didn't think of that, did you, Probie?"

"No," said McGee reluctantly, as if he was a disgrace to computer nerds everywhere. "But what if we're had up for negligence…?"

"Just drop it, will you, McGee? Or I'll make you eat the inside of your computer. Into which there _will_ be an inquiry."

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"The cause of unconsciousness is a mild concussion, Dr Mallard." The young doctor watched Ducky carefully. Slightly fearfully, as if Ducky was going to come and show him up as wrong. "It's not serious. But if it had been seen to sooner…"

There was a mutual shrug of understanding.

"She didn't say anything."

The young doctor nodded. "The force and placing of the blow would have damaged the nerves. She felt no pain."

Ducky gave a deep breath of relief.

"Only, Doctor Mallard… There's something else which I feel you ought to see."

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"There's a bruise, Jethro. Like this." Ducky traced his finger across his lower ribs and into his slight paunch.

"Do you know what would've made a shape like that?"

"That's what puzzles me, actually. From what I can see, and the four strips of deeper bruising, I would've supposed this came from a ski boot. If you remember that case of the Canadian helicopter pilot a few years ago…"

The doors to autopsy bumped gently closed.

"Jethro?"

Ducky sighed, but fondly. His old friend had slipped away, to pursue his idea. Not slipped. Jethro didn't slip. Just… left without anyone realising until he was already gone. Maybe it had to do with being a Marine. Or maybe it was just something about Gibbs himself.

He turned back to his surgical instruments, methodically checking and rearranging them. Chelmonski lay on the steel table. They had been born in the same year. Ducky in post-war Scotland. Chelmonski in Communist-controlled Poland.

"What happened that led our paths to cross?"

The other doctor remained motionless. His tanned face unnaturally white, his hair unnaturally still.

"And what happened to your daughter?"

There was a gasp behind him. It was so short and sharp it was almost like a catch of breath.

DiNozzo was sitting against the instruments cupboard, his head leaning against the lock that had been broken for years and no one had bothered to fix.

"Anthony?"

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"And what's happened to your son, Michael?"

A tall woman with a laugh like a braying horse. Leaning in right to Tony's face, a finger with a tasteless nail job poking at the cut on his forehead.

"A riding accident," his father grunted. And there was no need to the Look he threw down at Tony. He knew what would happen to him if he said anything else.

"Come, Elise," his father said, sweeping the woman up with one arm, and running one finger along her pearl necklace. "I'm sure we can find another Martini in my bedroom."

The woman laughed again. "Oh, Michael." And Tony was forgotten.

He always cried when he was younger, when his father gave him a slap for doing this or that. He knew it was stupid, because he never cried when he was older and he was told to bend over for the strap.

But that day he had made his dad really mad. It had been when he had walked in on his dad and the maid. In bed.

His dad had been skiing. The stuff was half unpacked, most of it was strewn over the room.

He had stopped in the doorway. His dad was always yelling at him for not knocking, but he never did, anyway.

"What are you doing?" he said, staring at the writhing peach satin duvet.

"Leave us, Anthony. I shall deal with you later." The voice was calm, but Tony's father's face glowed with fury and his eyes shone.

But Tony just stood there and stared. "What are you doing?"

"Shut up, boy."

"What are you doing?"

"Shut up!"

And he'd stood there and he'd said it again. "What are you doing?"

His father had ripped himself from the bed. Grabbed his ski boot. It was an expensive new model. It was heavy. He held it in both hands and he threw it.

It crushed Tony against the door frame. He couldn't breathe, just take desperate, empty, gasping attempts at taking in air. He was clawing at his chest, trying to rip it open, let the air in. The top of the doorframe thrashed around in front of him, and he could hear the maid screaming uselessly. "Michael! Michael!"

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"Anthony?"

Tony felt Ducky's comforting arm around him. He said nothing. And they just sat there together in the bright lights of the autopsy room; old and young, the Scotsman and the Italian.


	5. We Progress

"Well, it does give us a motive."

"Yeah, that's right, McGee. Gives us a motive to go down to that autopsy room and _pulp_ that man's face in, dead or not."

Tony's face was pinker than usual, his eyes brighter and deeper. McGee frowned. Emotion and sentimental feelings. Tony DiNozzo. Not words that generally connected up.

"You know what I mean, Tony."

"He's right," said Kate. "I found the boot he must've used. It was lying apart from the others." She didn't look at Tony. Looked at McGee's shoe instead. "And there was blood on their apartment wall. Chelmonski's blood. She could've done it, Tony."

Tony just sat a breathed for a few seconds.

"I know," he said quietly.

"Of course, it could've been an accident," babbled McGee. The thoughtful new Tony worried him. Happy-go-lucky DiNozzo was part of an NCIS agent's staple background. "Probably was. I expect she kicked back at him when…"

Tony stood up. Gave a bitter smile. "Forget it," he said.

"Tony, I-"

He thrust his hands in his pockets. Walked off down the orange walled corridor. "I said forget it."

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"Did you find the mother, Boss?"

"No, McGee," said Gibbs, not pausing in his stride into the bullpen. McGee threw a puzzled look over at Kate when Gibbs didn't elaborate. She shrugged. Gibbs had a reason. He always did. "That cell that Kate found. I want you to go through every number saved in it, every call ever made from it."

"Yes, Boss," said McGee, saving his disheartened look for when Gibbs turned around to rummage in a drawer.

"Kate. Do a profile on Chelmonski. Find out what the hell he was doing here. And McGee!"

"Yes, Boss?" McGee made a face as if Gibbs had just caught him doing something vaguely obscene.

"Speak to the Royal Navy."

"About what?"

Gibbs didn't answer. He left the bullpen, casting a glance at Tony's empty desk.

"I have no idea where he is," said Kate, in response to the question Gibbs hadn't asked.

He said nothing. Just walked into the open elevator, staring straight ahead as the doors closed.

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"Ah, Jethro. I was expecting you."

Jimmy goggled. "But Doctor. You haven't spoken to Agent Gibbs since we collected the body."

Gibbs looked at him.

"Sorry, sir," he faltered. "But how _did _you know?"

The special agent and the ME collectively ignored him. Jimmy fell into silence.

"My prognosis was wrong. Chelmonski didn't die of blunt trauma… It actually reminds me of our last director."

Dr Mallard and Gibbs winced simultaneously.

"Last director, Doctor?"

"Before your time, Mr Palmer. Our director was found with four bashes to the head, blood all over the desk. Naturally we all assumed that was the cause of death, but when it came to the autopsy, it turned out he'd been poisoned." From his tone of voice, the doctor clearly thought poisoning rather unsporting.

"Has this one been poisoned, Duck?"

"Yes. But this one was killed in quite an unusual way." Gibbs looked expectant. This always worried Jimmy slightly. It was as if a lion was patiently watching a very small mouse squeak a plea for life. The lion would have eaten the mouse, had it been a more fulfilling meal, but it wasn't, so he just lay there and watched it, slightly amused. "Nicotine overdose."

"But he didn't smoke," put in Jimmy.

"Yes, that's right, Mr Palmer." Jimmy beamed. "He didn't smoke. But such a huge overdose would've been impossible from smoking anyhow. The nicotine was extracted from several hundred cigarettes, and injected into our victim. The interesting thing is that he was unconscious at the time from this head wound, which I believe occurred earlier. I have spoken to Abigail and she matched up the blood on the wall of the room to his blood, and the shape of the wound is a match as well."

"Thanks, Duck."

"Gibbs!" Abby's face appeared in the video intercom.

Agent Gibbs strolled over to it in that slightly unnerving ever-so-fast way of his.

"Yes, Abs?"

"McGee wants to talk. I just love using this thing."

Agent McGee loomed up behind Abby, and stood there blinking worriedly.

"Yes, McGee?"

"We've been, er, running through all the phone records and the same number keeps showing up."

"Did you locate it?"

"Er, yes. It's a Navy lieutenant, Boss."

"Which Navy?"

"Ours. She's single. Got an alibi which checks out. But she and Chelmonski were-"

"Yes. I figured."

"Boss?"

"Yeah?"

"We still can't find the mother."

Gibbs nodded. "Good work McGee." The Probie's face lit up. "Have you spoken to the Royal Navy yet?"

"Well. Er. I. Not exactly. Um. No."

But Gibbs was already gone.

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"Kate."

"She _laughed_ about it, Gibbs."

"Kate."

"Her dad _hospitalised_ her. And she's sitting there. Laughing about it. That is so wrong."

"Kate. Did you get the discharge papers?"

"I've got them, Boss!" called McGee from across the hospital's waiting room. "Alex Chelmonska was still in our custody, so that's all the paperwork we need. But they said that she had to be under supervision."

Gibbs nodded. He stood up, headed towards the door to the ward. As he passed, he gave McGee a swat to the back of the head.

"Boss!" said the junior agent, with a facial expression like a small, fluffy kitten being trodden on. "What was that for?"

"Eavesdropping, McGee."

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"Gibbs."

"Bossman!" Abby called down the phone. "I spoke to a Royal Navy man. He said there was no urgent call for Chelmonski to come to DC. It was Chelmonski himself that arranged a last minute meeting."

"Thanks, Abbs." Gibbs flipped his phone shut. He leant against the yellowing wall of the hospital corridor. He could hear the familiar squeaking of McGee's shoes on the shiny plastic floor. "Yes, McGee."

"I just spoke with Bethesda Naval Hospital." McGee left a dramatic pause. "They say Lieutenant Sutcliffe is pregnant."

"Who?"

"Chelmonski's lady friend."


	6. Gone

"We have to move her to NCIS. _Now_."

"But Boss. I've already-"

"We need to move her _now, _McGee."

"Why now?"

Gibbs stopped in the corridor. "Because the chances are that this girl's mother murdered her father. What is there to stop her coming after her daughter?" Gibbs' shout made McGee flinch. When he next spoke it was softer; almost to himself. "I'm not going to let her die."

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"You're going to find my mum, aren't you?"

Gibbs nodded.

They were sitting in the NCIS van. They were driving slowly through the dark, the street lamps flashing occasional bars of orange which lit them all up unnaturally.

Alex was still in her tartan pyjamas. Her hair still tousled. Kate had found a blanket in the back of the van, and Tony had given her his NCIS jacket. He was the one that had broken the news. Hadn't volunteered. Just went and did it.

_Your mum bashed your dad's head __in when she realised another woman was having his baby._

Alex stared at the road ahead. Tony took a turn-off from the highway, and she watched him, as if giving the turn a mark out of ten.

"I thought it was just going to be an ordinary holiday. You know. Skiing. Mum. Dad. Friends."

You know. Kelly was always saying that. You know, daddy; I'd love a horse. Daddy, have you fixed the you know? You know I love you, daddy. And he did.

"Now my mum's a murderer and my dad's dead."

She lay back in the seat, pupils flickering as she watched the purplish-black landscape go past.

"Think I'll ever get to meet my half-sibling?"

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As far as M. DiNozzo was concerned, there was nothing a few thousand dollars of surgery couldn't deal with.

They sent him to hospital. Fifth time that year. _Riding accident_, they said. Again.

Doctors must've though he was the world's crappest rider.

Stayed there two weeks to get his ribs sorted out again. His dad's driver came to pick him up. The one with the bald head and no neck. The one who was always watching Tony and never watching the road.

That night when he got back, he just went straight upstairs the back way. Didn't want to see his dad. It was quiet, like before. He could hear the clocks ticking. All off rhythm slightly so it made one long, fat tick.

But then the shouting started. It was fuzzy and unclear at first, and then he'd been able to make our the words. And he'd laid in his dark bed and stared up at the ceiling. And listened.

The next morning the maid wasn't there any more. She'd just left. Forgotten. Replaced. In all her duties.

But Tony didn't forget.

One day, they were at dinner. _Family dinners build character. Right._

"Was it a girl or a boy?"

"Who the hell are you talking about?"

"Your other kid. Was it my half-brother? Or half-sister?"

There was nothing a few thousand dollars of surgery couldn't deal with.

As his father left him back at the hospital that night with the welts still raw from being 'mugged', Tony whispered after him. "Will I ever get to meet them?"

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"Do you want to?"

Alex smiled. "Truthfully; not really. I don't think I'll be meeting anyone if I don't sort out my clothes," she plucked at her pyjamas.

Kate's head appeared in the hole above the seats. It sucked to be outranked.

"I'm sure we can take some of your clothes out of evidence."

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"What do you need?" said McGee, watching Alex struggle to a sitting position on her makeshift bed under the plasma screen in the bullpen.

"Caffeine," groaned the Brit. "They gave me elephant pee at the hospital and said it was tea."

McGee laughed. She sounded like his sister. "I'll talk to Ducky. He keeps a box of Earl Grey somewhere in autopsy.

She pulled a face. "Can't stand Earl Grey. Don't you have any Lipton?"

"I'll ask."

A message scrolled across McGee's screen. The computer gave a delighted beep.

Alex peered up expectantly from the floor.

"We've got a hit on your mum." McGee waited for Alex to ask what that meant. She didn't. Film buff.

"Where?"

"A parking in Bethesda."

Recognition sparked in Alex's eyes. "That's where the hospital is, right?"

McGee nodded, typing an excited message to the LEO who had answered the bolo.

Alex sat and stared at her feet. Kate had fished out some flipflops from the evidence locker.

"There isn't a loo anywhere, is there?"

McGee stared. Alex was plainly trying to hide her embarrassment.

"A what?" he said, after a few seconds of thought.

"A loo. You know. Toilet. Bathroom."

McGee blushed. "Oh. Well. I. Er. Yeah, I guess."

He had hoped to root out Gibbs to give him the info on the bolo. Frowning slightly at the dilemma, he shot off a print out. "It's, um, this way," he said, collecting it as the printer spat it out.

She kicked off the blanket and scuttled after him, the back of the flipflops smacking against her heel.

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"Boss! We've had a hit on the bolo!"

McGee was jogging down the corridor after the striding Gibbs.

Gibbs nodded. "Bethesda."

McGee frowned. "How did you…?"

Gibbs smirked. He watched McGee calculatingly. "Where is she?"

McGee looked around him, alarmed. "She's in the bathroom, Boss. Just over there."

Gibbs stared over McGee's shoulder, pointedly, at the bathroom door. It swung gently shut.

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"I think she's in a car," Abby said. Kate nodded.

"Woman like that… She's gone West," said Tony.

"How can you tell?"

"She's committed murder. She wants to get away from the cops. She knows she can't go East because that's the easiest way out of the country but she knows she can't get past the boarder police. So she thinks, if that's the most obvious way; I'll go the opposite."

"I still don't understand why she couldn't have gone North or South," said Kate.

"She could be in Philly," said Abby. "It's closer."

Tony shook his head. "You have to understand her psychology. She's a sixty year old woman with a weird accent…"

"Lots of people have weird accents. Look at Ducky."

The conversation was shattered by the sound of splintering glass in the next lab.

Tony and Kate stared at each other. Their guns were upstairs. In their desk drawers.

Tony gestured for Kate to follow him. Careful not to make a noise, he padded to the arch which divided the labs, and peered in.

There was no one there but a broken window. The evening breeze was fluttering in, and with it a small bit of paper. Tony picked it up.

_Abby,_

_IOU for the window. A._

Tony turned it over. There was nothing on the back.

"She's gone," he said.


End file.
